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‘Lorenzo called.’ He walked into the middle of her room. ‘Cara said you’d come to work and then gone again almost immediately. She was worried.’ He looked at her bag. When he spoke again, his voice was colder than ice. ‘Were you going to leave a note?’
‘Yes.’
‘Written it yet?’
‘No.’
‘So tell me.’
‘There’s no need for me to stay anymore. I’ve found out all I needed to.’
‘What about Sara and the meeting?’
‘She doesn’t need me. She probably won’t even notice I’m not there. And Cara doesn’t need me, does she?’ she said bitterly.
His mouth tightened. ‘What about me?’
‘You don’t need me, either.’ And in another week he’d have someone else in her place.
‘What if I told you I did?’ He stepped closer. ‘What if I told you I wanted you to stay? Would you?’
She shook her head. Not trusting her voice. For how long would he want her—how long ‘til they became ‘just friends’. She couldn’t do that.
‘What if I said we have something special?’
‘What we have is good sex. That’s all.’
‘So you’re just going to run away? From me? From this?’
He threw Jack’s file at her.
She turned away as the pages scattered on the floor. ‘I don’t want it.’ Her voice broke. ‘I don’t want…’
‘Don’t want what?’
She turned back. ‘To stay.’
He walked right into her space. ‘I won’t let you go.’
‘You can’t stop me.’ She pushed past him and picked up her bag.
‘You think you’re so tough. But you’re not. You’re scared. You’re that total chicken.’
So what if he was right? So what if she was dying inside? She wasn’t going to hurt herself more by lingering in an affair that had no future. She couldn’t handle any more of the agony burning her through now. ‘I told you from the start I don’t do relationships.’
‘What the hell do you think we’ve been doing? We’ve been living together, being together, making love together—that’s not a relationship?’
‘We didn’t make love. We had no-strings, uncomplicated sex!’ How could he say otherwise? It was him feeling bad for her—his caretaker duty on full steam ahead—but she wasn’t his new pity project. ‘We were flatmates trading favours—nothing more than that. Not a relationship.’
‘That’s ridiculous. What is it going to take, Dani?’ He gripped her arm. ‘When are you going to face up to your fears? When are you going to let yourself trust someone? When are you going to let someone in? Because until you do, you’re going to be alone and lonely.’
‘Alone is exactly what I want to be.’ Alone meant there’d be no more loss. No more crippling heartache. She yanked her arm free and raced down the stairs.
‘I want you to stay.’ He kept pace. ‘I want you.’
She ran to the front door.
‘Did you hear what I said, Dani? I want you.’
Yeah, but the want wouldn’t last—the want would die. Everything else had been based on him feeling responsible, feeling guilty, feeling pity. None of which would last, either. So she turned, faced him down. ‘Well, I don’t want you.’
‘Liar. You want me just as much as I want you. You can’t say no to me.’
‘No!’ she shouted. ‘I’m saying it now. I don’t want you.’
And it wasn’t all a lie. For she didn’t. She didn’t want him like this.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘YOU have to get out of this office, Alex.’
‘You’ll just have to manage alone tonight, Renz. I’m sure you can handle it.’
Lorenzo had his hands on his hips. ‘It’ll be a good night.’
‘Are we going to settle this the old way?’ A hard out physical battle might just be the thing. At least it might wear him out enough to crash.
‘I couldn’t do it to you,’ Lorenzo grumbled. ‘The way you look, I’d knock you out first punch. Haven’t you been sleeping at all?’
Three days. Three long, lonely, bloody miserable days that had dra-a-aged. No, he hadn’t slept at all. In his head that row played over and over and over—preventing any kind of winddown of body or mind.
Could he have been more lovelorn teen? Throwing the most desperate lines at her—‘I won’t let you go’—what, like he was going to imprison her?
He wished he could have.
Damn, it still hurt.
She wouldn’t give them a chance. She wouldn’t let him in.
‘Have you heard from her?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Yes.’ He’d had someone track her from the moment she’d left—as awful as that was. He’d never used a private investigator in his life before, but in the last month he’d spent more on one than a footballer’s wife spent on botox for a year. ‘But that’s not the point.’ He wanted her to come back. He wanted her to want to. But it looked as if that wasn’t going to happen.
Lorenzo stared at him, his eyes darker than the moonless night. ‘You’re not going after her?’
‘No.’
Alex sat in the silence after Lorenzo had gone. Eventually acknowledged to himself that he’d lied to his friend. Another lie—this time to try to stop himself from hurting. It hadn’t worked. He could wait another day, maybe two, but then he had to go after her. He didn’t know what he was going to do when he got to her, but somehow he would win. He checked his phone again, saw the little icon flashing. There’d been many messages now, and he’d ignored every one. But he couldn’t ignore it anymore—had to have closure on something at least.
‘Alex?’ Patrick answered right away, sounded surprised.
‘Yeah, ah, sorry I haven’t got back to you sooner.’ Alex grimaced, what was he doing apologising? A spurt of irritation heated him, driving his words. ‘Look, I had a great father. He was fantastic. I don’t need another.’
Samuel had been there for him, had loved him. He truly was his dad and Alex wasn’t going to let an
yone take that from either of them.
There was a pause. Patrick cleared his throat. ‘I understand.’
Elbow on his desk, Alex shut his eyes and massaged round them with thumb and middle finger. Was that edge of disappointment genuine?
Yeah, he thought it was—it resonated with the disappointment deep in his own bones. ‘But maybe, um…’ his voice failed ‘…maybe I could do with a friend.’
He didn’t really know if it was going to be possible. It was a huge chasm between them, a pit of bad history miles wide. But he’d learned from Dani: things were never black-and-white and, hell, it was so hard to tell someone you loved something that was going to hurt them. Every instinct was to protect, as his mother had wanted to protect both him and Samuel—he could acknowledge that now. It didn’t make it right, but he understood why people sometimes lied. And he so badly wanted to be given another chance, surely he could offer one himself.
‘That would be great, Alex,’ Patrick said quietly. ‘Thanks.’
‘I thought you’d have been on a plane back to Oz days ago.’
Dani looked up from where she was staring at the bowl of sugar sachets in the café down by the waterfront. Lorenzo. Looking as unreadable as ever. Although his vibe was definitely one of disapproval.
‘I am. Tomorrow.’ She was working up to it. But there’d been one last thing she’d had to do first. Now even that was done.
‘Then you need to go and see him today.’
Dani shook her head. ‘He was doing me a favour because he felt bad about the video thing. He felt responsible. That’s all it was.’ He was doing what he thought he should. His sense of duty had driven him. And with all the stress he was under, things had got confused. But she was as right for him as an electric blanket was right for a snowman. She’d wanted to get out before he woke up to that fact. She just couldn’t handle the heartache.
‘Look, I’ve known Alex a long time and I’ve never known him to do something he doesn’t want to. He’s a smart guy—he knows what he’s doing,’ Lorenzo said. ‘I’ve never known him to move a woman in with him. He could have put you up in a hotel. He could have given you some money and walked away.’
